The worst thing about the Democrat and Republican parties is that they exist. The best thing is, they really don’t have to (Anonymous) – Published on Intrepid Report, by Larry Pinkney, May 29, 2012.

…Despite the ongoing pathetic and scummy efforts on the part of the U.S. corporate-stream media to pass off mindless gossip, endless distractions, gross distortions, crucial omissions, and outright lies as being supposed ‘news and information,’ the enormous economic pain and austerity suffered by everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people will ultimately collide head-on with the fallacious systemic propaganda being massively fed to ordinary, everyday struggling people. Read the rest of this entry »

New research published this week in the journal Heart has confirmed the findings of two controversial studies on calcium supplementation and heart attack risk published in the British Medical Journal last year, and which found a 24-27% increased risk of heart attack for those who took 500 mg of elemental calcium a day.[1] [2] Read the rest of this entry »

The Extremists Become Respectable: Colombia and the Mainstream Media – Published on Dissident Voice, by James Petras, May 26, 2012.

By any historical measure, whether it involves international law, human rights conventions, United Nations protocols, or standard socio-economic indicators, the policies and practices of the United States and European Union regimes can be characterized as extremist. By that we mean that their policies and practices result in the large-scale, long-term systematic destruction of human lives, habitat and livelihood affecting millions of people through the direct application of force and violence. Read the rest of this entry »

The head of state, confident after electoral victory, tells the governor of the central bank what to do, introduces forex controls and announces that a key sector of the economy, sold off to private investors 13 years ago, is to be nationalised. Two members of the government are appointed to head this enterprise, now in public hands again, and its private owners are told to go. Read the rest of this entry »

Published on ZNet (first on Nacla), By Steve Brouwer and Nacla, May 25, 2012.
First watch the video, 7.38 min. (also on YouTube).

Since the creation of the Venezuelan health mission Barrio Adentro, thousands of Cuban medical professionals have provided quality health care for some of Venezuela’s poorest communities. In Revolutionary Doctors: How Venezuela and Cuba Are Changing the World’s Conception of Health Care (Monthly Review Press, 2011), author Steve Brouwer highlights the revolutionary health care practiced by Venezuela and Cuba. Brouwer lived in Venezuela in 2007-08 where he witnessed the results first hand. “In my little village of 700 people, there were nine young people going to medical school, in a tiny village in the foothills of the Andes,” says Brouwer … (full text).

Toxic powder used to contaminate air in girls’ classrooms, leaving scores of students unconscious in Takhar province – Published on Al Jazeera, Source: Agencies, May 24, 2012. (Linked with Videos and texts about Afghanistan).

More than 120 schoolgirls and three teachers have been poisoned in the second attack in as many months in Afghanistan blamed on conservative radicals in the country’s north, Afghan police and education officials have said. Read the rest of this entry »

… In a commendable effort to help bridge this divide, the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore this month convened a workshop on the role of the press in India-China relations. It brought together practitioners and experts from China and India and one foreign journalist (Banyan). Read the rest of this entry »

Capitalism and its defenders maintain dominance through the ‘material resources’ at their command, especially the state apparatus, and their productive, financial and commercial enterprises, as well as through the manipulation of popular consciousness via ideologues, journalists, academics and publicists who fabricate the arguments and the language to frame the issues of the day. Read the rest of this entry »

Public Opinion in America’s 21st Century Police State – Published on Global Research.ca, by Prof. James F. Tracy, May 20, 2012.

The police state’s framework for suppressing information and opinion arguably threatens all forms of independent thought and appears poised to intensify as the “war on terror” continues. As the recent emergence of US plans for indoctrination in reeducation camps reveals, Western governments’ actual enemy is the capacity for a people to exercise critical thought en route to intervening in and altering political-economic processes. Read the rest of this entry »

The United States’ standing as “mediator” of international protests is a major obstacle for OWS to have to overcome – Published on AlJazeera, by Kusha Sefat, May 17, 2012.

Cambridge, United Kingdom – Where a state stands on the international scale impacts the fate of that state’s social movements. The United States’ position as a global military power puts the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement at a particular disadvantage. Read the rest of this entry »

As the summer of 2012 heats up, OWS will be more about disruption of the working class than trying to get the working class to join. The OWS strategy to cause a major disruption could be as simple as turning a knob … //

… OWS leadership most likely assume that their failure to get the working class is the fault of the 1% – or the bourgeoisie, as Lenin called them – who, thanks to capitalism, are “in a position to bribe the upper strata of the proletariat; these strata, so bribed, naturally behave as traitors.” Read the rest of this entry »

… The New York-based advocacy group Coalition for the Homeless, which has frequently criticized the city’s annual street homelessness survey, cast doubt on the city’s findings when they were released last month. “Today’s release of the City’s street homeless survey estimates a 23 percent increase in street homelessness from last year and confirms what we already know – there are more and more New Yorkers sleeping on the streets and in the subway system each night,” Patrick Markee, Senior Policy Analyst for the Coalition said in a statement. Read the rest of this entry »

Who is Jose Rodriguez? He is the criminal who ran the CIA torture program. Most of his victims were not terrorists or even insurgents. Most were hapless individuals kidnapped by warlords and sold to the Americans as “terrorists” for the bounty paid. Read the rest of this entry »

The Social Security program . . . represents our commitment as a society to the belief that workers should not live in dread that a disability, death, or old age could leave them or their families destitute.”—President Jimmy Carter, December 20, 1977. “[This law] assures the elderly that America will always keep the promises made in troubled times a half century ago . . . [The Social Security Amendments of 1983 are] a monument to the spirit of compassion and commitment that unites us as a people.”—President Ronald Reagan, April 20, 1983. Read the rest of this entry »

The beautiful image you see is not photoshopped. It is a photo of the heirloom “Glass Gem” maize variety recently rescued by seedsperson Greg Schoen and carefully stewarded by the Seeds Trust. When I saw this photo, I was overwhelmed. This, I thought, is a glimpse into the world we have denied ourselves because of how we choose to live. This is a picture of what kind of world we could live in if we only willed it … // Read the rest of this entry »

The economy sidles along. Sideways has become the constant theme this year and none of the news contradicts the notion that our malaise will linger. In view of the lack of leadership from Washington – the never ending American election cycle militates against actually doing anything other than run for re-election – we cannot expect dramatic policy initiatives of any stripe or color … //

In Germany, people are baffled by how hostile a country as religious as the United States can be to the principle of mandatory healthcare insurance. Not even conservatives question the system, which businesspeople say gives Europe’s largest economy a competitive advantage.

As the United States Supreme Court considers whether requiring people to have health insurance is unconstitutional, Germans are bewildered as to why so many Americans appear to be against universal coverage. Read the rest of this entry »

… In 2007 the collective vote for the radical left – comprising the New Anti Capitalist Party’s Besancenot, the Workers’ Struggle’s Laguiller, the Workers’ Party’s Schivardi and the Communist Party’s Buffet – was 3.3 million. This time it was 4.6 million, or a rise of 39%. Read the rest of this entry »

Eager to find and amplify signs of mass radical potential in a period when the capitalist rich are ever more clearly destroying democracy and the Earth – the chances for a decent future – we on the United States left are understandably prone to underestimate the ideological power of the ruling class. Recently, for example, a comrade sent me a link and suggested that I look at, and join him in celebrating, a December 2011 Pew Research Center opinion survey showing that nearly two-thirds of the American people think there are “very strong” or “strong” conflicts between the rich and the poor. The percentage of Americans who think this has apparently risen 19 points since 2009. Read the rest of this entry »

Germany’s right-wing populists are fond of insulting Islam in order to attract attention. On Saturday, violence prone Salafists took the bait, resulting in a riot that left 29 police injured. Despite the clash, however, the anti-Islam party can continue to display their anti-Islam caricatures, a court has decided. Read the rest of this entry »

Published on ZNet (first on red pepper), by Francesca Fiorentini, May 07, 2012.

… Economic collapse and the piqueteros:

The backdrop to Argentina’s rebellion was grimmer and more extreme than even the situation in Greece today (see page 17). Years of neoliberal policies had taken their toll. The official unemployment rate reached 17 per cent in 1996; in reality, it was even higher, with entire communities out of work. The country had no social security net or unemployment centres to help the jobless subsist and find work. Read the rest of this entry »

A letter from Cal/West Seeds shows that evidence of contamination was withheld and the USDA turned a blind eye to proof of contamination in 2005 which shows it was planted at least two years before it was initially deregulated in 2005. As you can see for yourself, the official letter states: Read the rest of this entry »

Sir Patrick Stewart (2/2) HARDtalk, 10.30 min: Patrick Stewart will be instantly recognisable to millions around the world as Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise. Or as Professor Charles Xavier of X-Men. But after 17 years in Hollywood, he’s turned his back on it to return to England and to venues like London’s Young Vic – to his first love – Shakespeare and the theatre. In his latest role he’s even playing Shakespeare. So why choose small audiences in venues like this over the glamour of Hollywood?